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"id": 420581,
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"speaker_name": "Sen. Elachi",
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"legal_name": "Beatrice Elachi",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, I also rise to support this Motion. When you look at the history of our disciplined forces, sometimes, we ask ourselves whether, indeed, we are willing to see them protect us or we are willing to engage them to know how to use the different ammunitions that they have in order to survive. I will give an example, when there was the issue of a haul of drugs in Mombasa and every police officer who had any link to the issue was assassinated. In one way or another, they were simply killed. There was a documentary that was aired on Citizen Television where the children were narrating their life stories and saying how they were suffering; without school fees and nobody willing to come near them because their fathers had died in the course of following drug barons in this country. Sometimes you find that there is a lot of fear in Government because of the different people or gangs that we deal with. Therefore, we tend to shy away from dealing with such issues. This Motion is, therefore, addressing such scenarios. There was a case in 2007 of Administration Police (APs) officers that were on their way to South Nyanza and they were killed in the line of duty. They were going to protect the ballot boxes before the elections, but they were ambushed and killed. Nobody knows where their families are today and how they have survived. It has reached a point where as legislators we now need to ask ourselves how we can come up with a law not just for pension, because the pension law is there, but they suffer to come and look for it every month. It also talks of compensation when death has appeared, where a lump sum is paid. This sometimes brings conflicts in the family which ends up not benefitting the children. Recently, there was a case of the late George Saitoti, Orwa Ojode and the two pilots. Today I do not know where their children are, if they are being taken care of or whether the pension due to them was paid. At that time, I looked at a small baby of one of the victims who was just one year at that time and I wonder whether they will get proper education. So, there are many things that come out. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, sometimes when we look at reality, we must accept that there are some things that we are doing wrong as a country. Therefore, if we want to have good disciplined forces, we must first take care of their welfare when they are alive and assure them of their families’ welfare in case they depart in the line of duty. Their families should feel proud the way the American families feel proud to be patriotic and fight for their country. This also depends on the individuals and the institutions that are there. At the end of the day, the President wants change. However, he has a troop of many people who have different ideas and thinking. Some are still in the old way of thinking where you do things in a slow manner; where they have to be begged to give services. When a pensioner is paid, he or she has to share it out with the payee and yet he or she has come all the way from, for example, Kakamega where some transport was used. This is a very sad culture. When you look at every police officer who has been killed by armed gangs or robbers, we have never been showed the other side of the story; that, indeed, they fought The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}